Patricia Penkoske, MD

Patricia Penkoske, MD, was born on the east coast but moved with her family to Missouri as a teenager. She attended then Lindenwood College for Women in St. Charles, Missouri, where she majored in biology, chemistry, and art history. During a summer job at Washington University School of Medicine arranged by one of her professors, she became interested in research and gained a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in what at that time was the new field of molecular biology, and volunteered at the campus’ University Hospital. After a year in graduate school, she was accepted to medical school at Washington University, graduating with AOA honors in 1974.

In 1974, she began training in general surgery at Barnes Hospital/Washington University and completed that program and two years of research in 1980. She then did training in cardiac surgery and pediatric surgery in Boston and Toronto. Her career as a cardiac surgeon, research investigator, and educator was at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and, later, at St. Louis University.

She is a member of the American College of Surgeon, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and has been on several editorial boards and a member and officer in several cardiac surgical organizations.

In 2000, she returned to the United States and in 2005 switched careers to critical care and completed a fellowship at Washington University. She joined the WashU faculty in critical care in 2005 and remains a practicing critical care physician at BJC HealthCare.

In addition to the Admissions Committee at the medical school, she is the current president of the Academic Women’s Network, and a board member for the past ten years at Lindenwood University. Her hobbies are travel, reading, and volunteering.